Chinese protestor throws ink at portrait of Chairman Mao

An angry Chinese protestor has attempted to throw ink over the famed giant portrait of Chairman Mao Zedong that hangs in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, police in China have confirmed.

The 1.5 ton portrait can be swiftly replaced with a spare that is always kept on hand for such eventualitiesPhoto: REUTERS

By Peter Foster in Beijing

4:38AM BST 08 Apr 2010

Police wrestled the man to the ground last weekend after he threw a bottle of ink at the portrait, a potent symbol of Communist Party power which hangs on the Tiananmen gate tower where Chairman Mao declared a new republic 60 years ago.

"At around 13:35pm, April 5 2010, a man was put under control after he threw a plastic bottle of ink towards the Tiananmen gate tower," the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau confirmed in a statement faxed to The Telegraph.

The audacious attack echoes the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest when three young men threw ink-filled eggs at the portrait in a gesture of defiance against China' Communist ruling party that resonated around the world.

The three men, Lu Decheng, Yu Zhijian, and Yu Dongyue, received some of the harshest sentences in the crackdown that followed the violent crushing of the protests, being jailed for 16 years, 20 years and life respectively.

Police identified the latest protester as a "Mr Chen" from the northeastern province of Heilongjiang who had come to Beijing to "raise individual issues".

Every year many thousands of disgruntled people come to Beijing in the hope of bringing their grievances to the attention of central government in a system that echoes the ancient right of individuals to petition the emperor for redress.

The police statement added that Mr Chen was had been detained by the security bureau for "disturbing social security orders", but gave no further details on his case.

The last reported attack on the portrait came in 2007 when Gu Haiou, a 35-year-old man from the far western province of Xinjiang, threw a burning object at the picture scorching the lower-left hand corner.

The 1.5 ton portrait was swiftly replaced with a spare that is always kept on hand for such eventualities.

Witnesses posting on the Chinese internet said police pounced on the man within seconds of the failed attack, bundling him to the ground and immediately throwing a cordon round the area which is visited by thousands of tourists every day.

It comes as new figures show that China is spending unprecedented levels of money and manpower to contain "internal threats" from its population.

Authorities fear people are becoming increasingly disgruntled by rising prices and a growing rich-poor divide that is overshadowing China's massive economic achievements of the last 30 years that have lifted millions out of poverty.

Common grievances include injustice at the hand of corrupt local officials, rising house prices, a failing healthcare system, forced evictions and land-grabs by developers and heavy-handed policing by the municipal authorities.

At his annual speech to China's rubber-stamp parliament, Premier Wen Jiabao, explicitly recognised that endemic corruption and rising inequalities were the two main threats to the Communist Party's sole right to rule.

Earlier this year, Yu Jianrong, a senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, issued a paper estimating that the Chinese state contains 90,000 such protests a year, a level of discontent that he said was "truly worrying" to Chinese leaders.

As an indication of Chinese government thinking, Mr Yu recalled a conversation with a retired "ministry level" official who told him: "You think that China's society will not experience upheaval. I think that it will definitely experience upheaval, and that time is not too far distant."

China analysts have differing estimations of the seriousness of the underlying threat to social stability, with some arguing the government's fears are over-stated as a justification for maintaining its iron grip on power.

Widespread predictions that China could experience massive social following the 2008 financial crisis proved unfounded as some 23 million migrant workers from China's battered export sector returned to their villages to seek other work.